JUDY WOODRUFF: Next tonight, Syria’s government steps up its killing of opposition demonstrators in the city of Hama and other towns.

Yesterday, President Obama said he was appalled by the Assad regime’s use of violence and brutality against its own people. The United Nations Security Council is meeting on the issue this evening.

We start with a report narrated by Bill Neely of Independent Television News.

BILL NEELY: They are burying their dead, but they’re aiming to bury the regime that killed them. Syria’s revolution and its death toll is growing, 84 protesters killed in one town, 29 in another, more killings today. Most of the slaughter was on the streets of Hama, the Syrian army attacking with tanks, firing indiscriminately.

And as one resident told us, it is still going on.

SALEH AL-HAMWI, Syria: They put a tank in front of the hospital, and anyone trying to come to hospital here is shot. I think that the main aim of the operation is to terrify people. If you go out of your home, you will be killed — this is the message.

BILL NEELY: This river runs red with the bodies dumped into it in the last two days. We can’t prove these men are from the regime. We don’t know the victims are protesters, but that’s what the insults suggest. The dead men are called traitors, animals, trash. The men throw eight or nine of them over the bridge, disposed of without burial.

BILL NEELY: The bullets and the troops don’t discriminate. This girl was shot in her home. This brutal crackdown has been launched at the very start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. It has begun. The revolution and the regime’s brutal response show no signs of ending.

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